Azure Serverless - Hands on Learning!

Explore Azure serverless services and use cases across compute, storage, database, and analytics. Briefly explain the purpose of each service and illustrate simple architectures solving real-world problems.

Discover how Azure serverless accelerates app development with pay-as-you-go compute using Azure Functions, Azure App Service, and Azure Kubernetes Service, scalable storage, Cosmos DB multi-model data, and analytics and monitoring.

Learn how serverless Azure Functions orchestrate ETL by converting XML to JSON upon blob storage uploads, using Event Grid triggers and storing results in Cosmos DB, with automatic scaling.

Upload an image to blob storage hosted single-page app, resize to a thumbnail, analyze with cognitive services, store metadata in Cosmos DB, and email the admin in serverless Azure workflow.

Explore Azure's serverless services across categories, examine real-world use cases and their architectures, and grasp the basics of serverless computing. The next module introduces the course project architecture.

Explore the course project architecture and the services needed to implement the solution, and view the final application demo with attached project files.

Host a static React front end on Azure blob storage with static hosting, secure and scale the API using Azure AD B2C, API management, Azure Functions, Cosmos DB, and CDN.

This course project demo presents a React app with signup and sign in, a login page, and a serverless-inspired dashboard that stores and edits user email, location, and interests.

Explore the architecture of the course project and view a demo of the final application, then download and unzip the project files in your local environment.

Explore Azure Cosmos DB, a serverless NoSQL database, data models and APIs, partitioning for scaling, container with items for a user profile with location and interests, and cost estimates.

Compare SQL and NoSQL databases, highlighting relational SQL with static schemas and storage, versus NoSQL with dynamic schemas and unstructured JSON, use cases for strong relationships and unstructured data.

Explore how Azure Cosmos DB delivers a fully managed, globally distributed NoSQL database. Cluster near end users to reduce latency, with region replication, automatic scaling, and multi-model APIs.

Discover Cosmos DB data models and APIs across SQL API, MongoDB API, Table API, Gremlin API, and Cassandra API, and apply core concepts like global distribution, provisioned throughput, and indexing.

Learn Cosmos DB as a multi-model database by creating accounts, databases, and containers for scalable items with throughput; containers are schema-agnostic and map to various APIs.

Create a Cosmos DB account, database, and container in the Azure portal using SQL API and 400 request units per second. Set email as the partition key and add items.

Explore how partitioning in Azure Cosmos DB scales containers by using a partition key to form logical partitions, while Cosmos DB automatically manages physical partitions to support throughput and storage.

Learn how to calculate Cosmos DB costs by provisioning throughput in ru per second, handle reads, writes, throttling, and queries, and use the capacity calculator to estimate monthly costs.

Explore Cosmos DB basics, including SQL vs NoSQL, data models and APIs, create a SQL API database and container with email partition key, and run simple queries while estimating costs.

Learn how Azure Functions run code on demand without managing servers, triggered by events, with a simplified programming model, pay-per-use pricing, and automatic scaling in serverless applications.

Explore Azure functions use cases such as timer based triggers, http triggers for APIs, and serverless backends; process e-commerce orders from queue to database and handle telemetry and IoT data.

Discover how triggers start Azure functions and pass data, including http, timer, blob storage, and queue triggers, and how input and output bindings connect resources declaratively.

Create your first Azure function in a function app with the portal editor, select a runtime and region, attach storage, and configure triggers, bindings, and keys for a serverless API.

Learn to build four Azure Functions for a course project: retrieve all user data from Cosmos DB, fetch and update logged-in user location and interest, and delete your own data.

Create an http-triggered azure function with anonymous authorization, bind it to a cosmos db container, and return all users' emails and interests.

Create an http-triggered Azure function named get to retrieve a single user’s data from Cosmos DB by email, using an input binding, a query parameter, and 400 error handling.

Create an Azure function with http trigger that saves user data to Cosmos DB, updating existing users or creating new ones. Use an input binding and upsert to manage items.

Explore Azure Functions pricing across consumption, premium, and app service plans, focusing on automatic scaling, warm instances to avoid cold starts, per-execution billing, and cost estimation with the Azure calculator.

Explore Azure Functions, a serverless compute service with triggers and bindings, create a hello function, review pricing, and implement Cosmos DB operations: get all, get by email, save, delete.

Explore what an API is and how exposing services through well-defined APIs lets multiple front ends access a single backend, enabling reuse, scalability, and a consistent customer experience across devices.

Learn how to create and publish APIs using Azure API Management, package APIs into products, apply policies like rate limiting and JWT validation, and empower developers through the developer portal.

Create and manage an Azure API management service, design a sample test API, and explore revisions, versions, and testing via the portal REST client.

Add a sample get operation to a test api in the design tab for a book resource with a required id, and review inbound and outbound processing in api flow.

Enable the mock response policy in inbound processing to simulate a backend, returning a 200 status with a json mock book object (title, author, published) for front-end testing.

Test your API using the in-portal rest client and Postman to send get requests, set headers and parameters, manage environments, and reuse base URLs with variables.

Enable subscription key requirements to restrict API access to clients with a key, manage keys, and enforce the key in header or query parameters to secure and monitor API calls.

Compare API management pricing, noting the consumption plan is serverless with pay-per-call usage and automatic scaling; developer portal isn’t available in this plan.

Explore the concepts of Azure API management, examine API flow and subscriptions, test a created API connected to an Azure function, and review plans including the consumption plan for Postman.

Explore building a front end for a React-based web app that consumes a backend api, runs locally on port 3000, and covers cors, Azure blob storage hosting, and storage explorer.

Learn to build a React frontend for an Azure serverless course project using the Create React App boilerplate, Axios for API calls, React Bootstrap UI, and local Node npm setup.

Explore how the same origin policy restricts web interactions and how cross-origin resource sharing enables servers to grant access to specified origins, methods, and headers.

Enable cors in api management by configuring endpoint policies to allow localhost:3000 origins, with get, post, put, delete methods and content-type headers for your React app.

Host a React app on Azure Blob Storage by enabling static website hosting on a v2 storage account and uploading the build, including index.html, to the web blob container.

Develop the front end of a React app and host it on Azure Blob Storage, using CORS policy to control access in a serverless deployment without VMs.

Secure your serverless app with Azure AD B2C, enabling sign up and sign in via email or social identities, decode jwt tokens, and authorize a React app to access API.

Register an Azure AD B2C directory, link it to your subscription, and configure an app with a sign-up sign-in flow and token-based redirects to secure the API.

Set up api management to validate JWT tokens from Azure AD B2C, restricting access to registered users. Configure audience and issuer details, test with Postman and handle 401 errors.

Implement user-level authorization for Azure functions by validating the email in the token against the request. Decode the JWT with a library and enforce 401 on email mismatch.

Secure azure functions by requiring a valid jwt token for http triggered calls routed through api management and preventing direct access with the host level key.

Learn to secure a React app by integrating Azure AD B2C for API calls using a library, and configure tenant, user flow, app registration, and token management.

Secure a serverless API using azure ad b2c for sign up and in. Validate tokens in api management and use token claims for authorization, then connect a react app.

Build a serverless Azure web app with Cosmos DB, Azure Functions, API Management, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure AD B2C authentication; secure the React front end with JWT tokens.

Clean up Azure serverless resources to avoid charges and risks by deleting Cosmos databases, stopping functions, and removing API management, blob storage, and B2C assets; review billing by resource group.

End your course with insights into Azure serverless services and how to use them together to implement a serverless architecture, and explore additional Azure and cloud courses.